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Fix it Friday: Proper Blocking

One of the more common mistakes that I see is illustrated in the above video. Too often I see some Modern Arnis players block in the manner that I demonstrated at the beginning of this video. There are, unfortunately, a number of videos on YouTube that contain this error and I always look in horror as they unknowingly commit this fundamental mistake.

The correct way is illustrated in the picture below:

Proper blocking form.

Note that as I block, my elbow is down and I’m much more structurally sound than if I have the elbow up.

The flaw in having the elbow up is that it causes the defender’s hand to cross their centerline, which leaves them quite vulnerable to counters by a savvy stick player.

The other reason is that by leaving the elbow up makes it much more likely that one will completely whiff on a block, particularly on angles 1 and 3. Indeed, one of the YouTube videos that I’ve watched shows both participants completely missing their block on angle 3, both for the same reasons. They had, unfortunately, raised their elbows.